 Aloha, and how are you doing? Welcome to Hibachi Talk. Gordo the techs are here, it's been a long time It seems I've been traveling around the world watching the University of Hawaii football team and having a lot of fun I got Andrew the security guy, I almost forgot your money, it's been so long. Yeah, you've been gone too long, you've been way too long, man And our guest today is Charles DeJune. Charles is welcome here. Hey, thank you for having me on. It's awesome It's really great to have Charles on the show So, you know, you get someone who's willing to take the risk of coming on to Hibachi Talk, man Right in the heat of the campaign, how many days left? Six and a half weeks. Six and a half weeks to go, but I'm really fast here now Yeah, well, and you know what I like the most is what you walked in by yourself. There was no on to rock Where's the press corps? My volunteers got to be out there, we're campaigning, so you know, we're at the place at the same time You know, a slave driver, some things never change So anyway, we, you know, the way this format of the show works We like our viewers to get a sense of who our guests are and so on, and so we have some Canadian viewers We actually have a Canadian viewer that went to see you at a community meeting Oh, no kidding. Oh my God. When you were in City Council, who watches this. That's awesome So, anyway, we'll just skip a little bit of your background, like where did you grow up? Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I grew up here in the islands, went to print a home, don't hold that against me And thank you for joining us But yeah to high school, I went to college at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia I studied there, studied at the Wharton School of Finance, got a business degree over there, then went to law school at USC Came back while I worked for law firm for a number of years Was in the legislature, then went to the City Council for seven years before we got a link to the Congress Right. Married, got three kids, two boys, two girls Perhaps though, in terms of my background, the one thing I get asked more than anything else though Gordon is, where in the world did I get my last name from? Okay, okay, okay, so this is this is the background of my last name here So my last name is Zhu, DJ OU, is actually misspelled Chinese. Okay. My Chinese name is actually should have been translated Z-H-O-U, Zhu. That's my Chinese name My father was born and raised, Brandon Shanghai raised in Hong Kong My mother was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand But the story behind it all is is that my dad or my grandfather, my father's father He got this odd French translation of his last name when he immigrated coming out DJ OU instead of Z-H-O-U Yes, so this is how you have this Pakeh guy with all of you Interesting. I love it, I keep wanting to go D-I Yeah, I understand in French that is how it is written actually in French. It should be D-I-J-O-U But yeah, I got whatever. It's an immigration creation. It's an immigrant story Nobody has this last name unless you relate it to me Awesome about this country, right? You know my parents were immigrants into Canada. I immigrated it to the United States That's the beauty of what this country is So we're gonna get into a couple of topics One of our things we do in our show and I'm gonna set you up on this Okay, it's got you know got one tech job And what we do is we go around town and we take pictures of things that yeah You know that probably the person that was involved wasn't a technology type person So we got a shot here at this is you know got one tech job now You got to look close at this this might look familiar to you Those are not billboards Construction billboards down these are the railcars one or three days after they arrived in Honolulu I gotta lead you I gotta lead you into this. We already got a question On Twitter. What does it say? Can't read that part given all the oversight. How do you think the rail project got so much There was a lack of oversight and that was the basic key problem here Actually if I could pick up on that on the screen what you guys were showing yeah those railcars here I mean it is in some ways the perfect symbol of all of the mismanagement we've got going on with this real system And let me explain here. Okay, these railcars we purchased them what a little over a year or two years ago Or so we're not going to use them for several more years, right? Let me just put this in the minds of all of your viewers all of your listeners here You know my middle child right now. She is 13 years old She will not drive for at least another three or four years Would I buy a car for my daughter today when she won't be able to drive for another five years? Who does that yeah other than our city government which went out bought these railcars Which we're not going to use for years and the only use for them is graffiti canvas and these things cost hundreds of millions of dollars I mean that's crazy And it is just one I think good symbol of this whole larger problem We have with this real system it has been horribly mismanaged incompetently led and We have problems like this. Yeah, I mean this one this one blew me away when it came in it's okay Wait, how do you how does this happen? Yeah, cuz you know you're interested in the security business the physical security business Like how do you put these in a warehouse and then have this happen and this like you didn't do this artwork in like 15 or 20 minutes? Yes, yes, yeah, I see when you project manage it You you would have the security on and in place before you put the assets there, right? And that's apparently didn't happen I don't know the details of how these guys were there long enough to do that much pain You know Andrew it ties into this whole rail project and what was going on with it here And that is it has just been so rushed I mean everything about this system has been very very poorly managed everything about it was well start rush rush rush rush Let's rush the construction. Let's put in the pillars Let's put in the the by the rail cart super early under the assumption that if we build it they will come if we build it Everything what could possibly go wrong? And then now of course as after we have rushed all of this here We find out here we have cost over on after cost over on after cost over on we have endless delays here with the system And now today Ironically we have the opposite problem after rushing the construction of this rail system The city is now running out of money and we're telling the contractors. Oh, whoa, whoa, slow down slow down slow down And I hear from so many contractors subs They're getting paid, but I mean their payments aren't getting prompt aren't prompt interesting And I think that is yet another example of competent management of this real system It's sort of this herky jerky will rush rush rush rush rush and then slow down and rush and slow down and It doesn't matter whether you're in construction or you're in technology any time you have management like that You get bad results. Yeah, so and there's so many entities overseeing it though You've got you've got the heart board. It's a heart. You've got the heart board itself You've got move a wahoo forward. Yeah, you've got the city council. You've got the administration I mean, yeah, you know, you're right There's a lot of fingers all over this real system a lot of people, you know Trying to just push one way or another here, but ultimately at the end of the day The buck has got to stop with the chief executive of the city government. That's the mayor So, you know, I understand the mayor has a lot on his or her plate in any given time Granted the mayor has to do lots and lots of things here But the reason you're supposed to run for and want that top job is because ultimately the buck is supposed to stop with you Right. And so if you have heart and you have these consultants You have the city council you have all these different people tugging pulling pushing all these different ways here It's a recipe for disaster But the remedy for that has been and will always be the mayor the mayor and that's the one person who's in charge and the One person who needs to step up and take responsibility and get involved and make the decisions And even though it's not going to be popular across all the boards Will you be the construction people the project managers or whatever? You've got to be the one that and that's the one person to whom the people need to hold Accountable because ultimately like it or not at the end of the day That's the one person one elected official who the people can validate and keep an office or say hey look this thing Is so gosh done screwed up. It's time for a new man touch new man. Yes. Okay, so thank you I know we got a lot of stuff I'm gonna keep this thing going. Okay. I'm it's it's my show So the other Andrew pays for it. So that's the video So the other thing I'm really interested in I think it kind of fits with with with the really is this whole thing and with Effet what's going on with that? But yeah, yeah, no, I'll go out right a friend I spent a lot of time with Chuck total when I was down there I mean it was in a lot of time going into his office and saying Chuck I'm thinking of doing this yeah, and he'd go okay We'll get back to you and he would always give you your pros and cons of how to do it and he'd say You know you can't do it, but then you're gonna have to deal with the ramifications that make it later Yeah, so now I'm getting all concerned like the ethics is all getting closed up You mean can I as a director if I was a director? Can I go down to them now? Yeah, no, you know growing you have more familiarity than the average person having been a member of the the mayor's cabinet What has happened with the city ethics commission has been a complete travesty, you know Chuck Tato as he pointed out He was the city ethics director. He was the ethics director for years Decades and right and he he butted heads with a lot of very strong personalities me. Yeah, you But after all this time dealing with Jeremy Harris with Mufi Hanuman with Peter Carlisle Although he butted heads with them. I felt he was always fair and I people. Yes. Yes The tragedy is is that Kirk Caldwell gets elected and all of a sudden hates all this turbulence He starts asking some questions about the mayor's political fundraising and today He basically was forced to resign from his position because he was asking the quote-unquote wrong questions about the mayor's fundraising practices and court That is wrong We need an ethics commission and the ethics director who's tough but fair and is not under the thumb of the mayor's office, right? Because integrity in your government Basic underlying trust in your government is the foundation of any democracy and here in the city and county of Honolulu If the ethics director can get railroaded and shoved out of his job Nice nice We've got to fix that we've got to fix it we in our community here in Honolulu deserve better than that Yeah, that's exactly what we've got another tweet that ethics can be a growing problem across the spectrum government. How do we fix it? Yeah Several things here. I mean then the micro in terms of what do we do with the city ethics commission For me has to be a commission that is completely independent of political pressure And for me if I'm fortunate to get elected mayor what I look forward to doing is allowing the ethics commission to submit their Own budget separate and apart and not be subject to review as mayor Caldwell Huston from the corporation council's office or the mayor's office And allow the ethics commission to be this independent body to give fair unbiased non-political advice or in the horrible situation where somebody violates ethics code to give a straightforward blunt prosecution of a particular matter right now unfortunately what we have is that in the words of my former opponent Peter Carlisle Ethics has been eviscerated here in the city and we deserve better. No, this is not the way a government is supposed to run Yeah, it's like keystone cops right now. Yeah speaking of cops. I mean it's the same thing You know like I've never seen the police department in such disarray. I've never seen There's a community services thing now. There's an audit. They got to be 15.9 million dollars back to the federal government I mean, there's all this kind of stuff just keeps coming out and I remember under under under movie and love them Hey, yeah, or hate them and I love movie. Yeah, but I never voted for him which when the first time around So when I became the director the first time and movie brought me in yeah movie said to me Is there anything that I should know I said yeah, I never voted So when I came in there one thing that movie required us all to do every year as directors was go through ethics training Yeah, every year they made it required you had to show up Yeah, there wasn't it wasn't an option and Chuck would go down a number of scenarios Yeah, you know some current some not so current to help us understand Yeah, what the borderline was and I always used to get in with So, you know, it's just amazing what's happened on that side Gordon you're exactly right here We for years decades have had all these boards and commissions that have been in some ways sleepy But the police commission the ethics commission what's going on with the affordable housing fund? Nobody really paid much attention because they were running smoothly quietly in the background But now under this current administration we see problem after problem after problem, you know And so in a lot of ways I describe this to people Gordon is when you Any voter out there you look at what's going on here in the city Whether it's rail or the police force or ethics or affordable housing or ambulance or whatever it is Ask yourself this simple question. Do you think the city today is in a better position than it was four years ago? And it's a modified of what the president, you know what you said here, but it's the same concept Do you think we're better off today than we were four years ago or not? Yeah, and that's a that's a yes or no answer Yeah, it's very simple and that actually should guide you on how you vote in the upcoming year solution So it's interesting you think they're gonna be a big turnout for the election You know, of course as a candidate. I always want a big turnout, right? I always want the people that participate I am however very disappointed that unfortunately, I think you know here in Hawaii We have the lowest voter participation rate in the United States of America and that's an enormous tragedy I'm always cautiously optimistic, but uh, you know at this election here. I don't know. This is a crazy election Not just for the mayor's ship, which I'm running for but I mean the national loves even more nuts Well, that's not go there though. No, we're not that that's really really crazy. It's only a 30 minute show And we're gonna take a break. Okay, we have a guy called Angus is gonna come he's gonna ask you Scottish Scottish which is kind of like Chinese very tight with his money. Yeah. So anyway, he's gonna come and ask you a question or two And um, then we'll continue on from there. Anyway, go to the tech star and in the security guard Charles, did you candidate for mayor? We'll be back in a minute Good afternoon Howard wig cold green think tech hawaii.com I appear on Mondays at three o'clock and my gig is energy Efficiency doing more with less It's the most cost effective way that we in hawaii are going to achieve 100% Clean energy by the year 2045. I look forward to being with you. Aloha You're watching think tech hawaii meaning people we may not have otherwise met Helping us understand and appreciate the good things about hawaii Great content for hawaii from think tech Hey, stand the energy man here. 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Have a great summer and tune in at noon every tuesday Aloha everybody and welcome back to about to talk and security guy here And I just wanted to bring up something we touched on earlier and that happens all the time to us on construction sites where Deliverables and timelines and ideas about a project get changed right and so we talked about some rail cars Or they got delivered to a site that obviously didn't have any security ready to take care of those rail cars So, you know, we we have a fairly straightforward practice with that You know, you you put your assets where they're protected and if you can't do that then you got to put the asset somewhere else So let's think about getting those rail cars somewhere else if there's not going to be security put in there Okay, uh, I got angus here. He's off the beach and see him in a few weeks angus. What's going on, buddy? All right, man. It's good to see you lad. Right. I don't want to take it back You know chalice is a really Scottish name, but the shoe is not I didn't get how that works. Anyway, you know you ever heard of this guy called um, Marco Rubio I have Marco Rubio the governor of florida stated we need transparency and government spending We need to put each government's expenditure online so every floridian can see what their tax money is being spent on You know, my Scottish heritage makes me kind of tight with the money Like your chinese Scots and pockades, I mean No, I'm gonna go disappear back in the beach for my question is you what are you gonna do about transparency and government making sure We can see what our money's going Absolutely here. You know what? I like that idea of putting things online So the public can see exactly how everything's are spent and you know what? You have my commitment that if I get elected mayor one of the first things I am going to do is call for an outside audit of the city rail system So we know where all those billions of dollars went and we know where the money's gonna go And how much it is going to pay to fix this whole gosh darn mess that we have That's what we got to do That's also do you have any idea how much of the money that we've used that we had and then how much more we've got to bring through I mean we had a third where we had overall in the budget for the well Well, we well we've already spent several billion We've already uh authorized a tax increase for seven billion dollars. Okay real system here Our problem here is is we don't know how much it's going to cost to finish it. That's what a big problems Yes, there are some forecasts that say to finish the whole thing out It'll be someone in the age of eight eight and a half billion But there are also some out there who have said it could cost 11 maybe even 12 billion dollars 50 Yes, and this is a huge huge problem here because the original cost was supposed to be 5.2 billion So already billions over budget and the question now here isn't are we over budget? It isn't every billions over budget. It is how many billions are we going to be over budget? That's why it's a point we get A mayor who's going to look at the money here, you know Our hand angus says the the budget director here The good thing that i was thinking is you're you know, you're with your background at worton I mean Did they give you business problems like that? Hey, you spent five million or two million over now And you got a you're going to be 10 mil over when you're done like Yes, absolutely, which is why I I'm calling for a outside independent audit of the rail system here So we know where the money is going here But again the bottom line is the bottom line You need a leader who cares about this who looks at this here and understands that the people of our community Are not made of money. We don't have an unlimited amount of resources here And it's easy to throw out these numbers billions and billions and billions But we have to not forget at the end of the day these billions are coming from families Yeah, they're coming from us. They're going to come out of our school Let me mention something again because I kind of got insider information because I was there Yeah, but you know back when we were um, we put a new financial system in the city state of the art It's still there. It's just and you know, and it was the team of of civil service that put this in Did a phenomenal job and they're still on top of it. It's a great job All kinds of great reporting comes out of that system. They used to put online the actual spending by quarter By department online and available to the public. I went it's not there anymore. Yeah, and and and and We're in that's wrong That's wrong because we and the government should never ever feel the people Especially when we're using the people's money and I think we need to do that with the rail system And I think we should go back to doing that for the city at large Yeah, I mean if you know that you can put the rail budgets out and break them down Yeah, the city has a very good financial system. So no one can give you the argument While we don't have adequate technology to do it I know for a fact they got one of the best in the in the country as a matter of fact in 2011 or 12 The city got a sunny award National award for transparency because they were putting up all this financial What's happened since then so but it's not there anymore. And so why is the rail budget not up there? Why can't I not look at every monthly financial statement that comes out of the rail budget? They have it. Yes, and actually I would take a step further not just a monthly financial statement I think we should be having a electronic checkbook online to every check that the rail cuts Is posted online here? So the people know not just generally what we spend every month But every penny can be accounted for and that's not happening right now. That's why we need new leadership And I can do it now and we can sit in there and we can analyze by contractor We can analyze by contract type We can see we can take industry experts like you and security and say Why are we spending so much on security when I know the industry averages are in around this number? And that's where the others can come in. Yeah, and where's the like the performance ratings on the contract? You know in the dod space we get there's always past performance ratings and all this kind of stuff happens While you're doing it after the contract you always we have to give that to win other contracts I mean, there's a lot of data there that we were surely not seeing in this instance And it's much less common practice, you know, yeah, you know Space but I mean government. I think, you know, muni-gub should be another that sort of standard And if I could just also add here This is not like it was just a a wastewater station or a highway on wrap or something like that This is the biggest public works project in the history of the state of Hawaii This is a project if we don't clean up this mess and clean it up right now This is something that can suck down our whole city. I mean, this is billions of dollars our people do not have Billions of dollars which is being taken away for everything else in our city government whether it's homelessness Ethics the police affordable housing all of that schools. I mean who needs help here The city owns a lot of the land that the public schools run and there's still the state issue Right, but the thing is you know where I come back to is this um the cooperation between the state and the city doesn't seem to be there It doesn't be there and I'll give and I'll go throw in my example So the city the state is estimated is going to cost a hundred million dollars to put in a new financial system There's this over 35 years old. Yeah, no this as you know, Charles DMV is run by the city and county of Honolulu. Yeah, that's a state function State ID is run by the city county of Honolulu. That's a state function So the city and county of Honolulu has a great financial system a great payroll system That's based on the union contracts at the same one as the state has why can't the state and the city get together and say Wait a minute. Why don't we share this existing financial system that's already in place? Yes Yes, and growing it comes down to again a lack of leadership a failure of communication Between the mayor's office and the state government a failure communication between the mayor's office and the feds and even A failure of communication between the mayor's office and the Honolulu city council. We can't have that here It is causing too much friction. It is it is just crazy You know, actually if I could just add a real trick you know, um, I served in the United States congress before I Yes, that's right. That's right You know when I was a member of congress, uh, you know, I I got to sit down and meet with the president Not a lot, but I mean a few times I was horrified that when I talked to city councilmember trevor ozawa Who represents now took my seat. He represents east Honolulu right I met in my one term as a freshman won a 435 congressman I met with the president of the united states more frequently Then city councilmember ozawa has met with the mayor of honolulu and there's only nine city council members And they work in the same building. They're only one floor apart Oh, wow crazy. That is absolutely crazy. We cannot have a government like that without the dialogue That's where the that's why there's no management. There's no dialogue. Yes And that's why it should be no surprise to anybody why our city isn't such a mess And why we need new leadership here in our government I heard it on a body talk I agree. I mean I would walk down and go meet with council members and give them a heads up on what I was going to be doing So that when I walked in there and said something you had an idea what was happening and had no do And you all it did your homework. Now, whether you agreed with me or disagreed with me that didn't matter At least the point is we could we could do point counterpoint and be and not be down each other's throat Because ultimately government is supposed to serve the people. We are all working for the same boss Yes, the people but the problem I feel so much is going on in hollywood hollywood right now It's the other way around it's an attitude that the people work for the government the government sometimes more important than people And that's wrong. We need to change that. That is totally next question. They ask How do we revamp this is emergency services? I guess but to address some of the costly abuses of the services I guess there's people. Yeah, we're servicing. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So let me explain this here. Okay For the first time in a generation We've had ambulance services actually go down here on the island of wahu We've had 12 hour shifts where certain parts of the island have just gotten no ambulance service The reason for that is well, it's mismanagement more specifically mismanagement of our resources of ambulance services Now one of the problems our ambulance services encounter Is that we have certain individuals a tiny minority who constantly are calling the ambulance The average person out there will call an ambulance maybe once every five or 10 years But there's a tiny number of individuals who will call it repeatedly three four times a week I remember those reports like heart patients or whatever they have. Well, no, it's actually they're disproportionately homeless And and and they're using the ambulance as a taxi service They're they're hungry and they need a sandwich you're calling the ambulance So they're out macaja and they get all the way down on their right So let me and we only got a minute and a half to go. So I got to jump in real quick. Yeah, so there was a study done Um, uh that said that they should merge ambulance and fire. The study said yes And it would save money. Yes, it never happened. Yeah So it so that's what we need to start saving money because we gotta pay for this rail somehow Yes, and that's why the creative solutions. I think we ought to be taking a look at here But one of the things I want to do immediately is reestablish something called a community ems program community paramedics Just very briefly it is for the people that identify the top 5911 callers And instead of sending a regular ambulance to them all the time we dedicate just two paramedics Right well service only those so-called top 5911 callers So we save the rest of the system for everybody else here. That's what makes sense Yeah, because I want to be tragic to have a user of the system cost someone else their life, you know And non, you know, it was a mistake that the current administration eliminated that program if I could elect you We're going to reinstate it because that makes sense for all of us. Yeah, that sure does it sure does So anyway, believe it or not, we burned through it That's okay, I appreciate it I got a list of my long so maybe we'll squeeze you back in right now But you know, no guest goes unrewarded on this show. So you get an autograph solo cup. This is number 87 in the series Okay. Thank god it's not 86. Anyway, um So it's number 87 in the series. Yeah, you get to take that When you're up there taking you know taking your your oath of office, you can Sure, well, I'm sure you'll be good for that. Hey, Charles Very much. I appreciate sharing and great luck. It was a lot of fun You know, we have a little thing we do at the end of every show to tell everybody how it's going. So I said one two three Okay, how are you doing?